


To Court, A Lady

by lachatblanche



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, F/M, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 02:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17889884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lachatblanche/pseuds/lachatblanche
Summary: Viscount Charles Xavier, bored of the demands and trappings of His Majesty's court, encounters a strange and alluring woman while attending a ball.





	To Court, A Lady

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [Gerec](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gerec/pseuds/Gerec) in the [xmenrarepairs19](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/xmenrarepairs19) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
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> Arranged marriage au! Dark!Charles marries an ambitious and brilliant Emma who becomes his equal in every way. OR Dark!Charles marries a young and impressionable Jean and corrupts her to his way of thinking. Prefer still have powers au. Can be set in any verse - space, post-apocalyptic, ancient, medieval, fantasy, viking...your choice!

Viscount Charles Francis Xavier, noted wit and poet, gentleman scholar, master of many tongues (as the ladies could attest) and firm favourite of King George, was bored. 

The ball he had chosen to grace with his presence that night was, to his great dismay, detestably lacklustre. The conversation, such as it was, was dry and repetitive and the ballroom was cramped and poorly lit. That, perhaps, could have been excused but he also found that his fellow attendees – the dozens of men and women in their powdered wigs and elaborate, carefully chosen costumes – fawned over him excessively in a way that he found to be both mildly suffocating and exceptionally annoying; they were each of them all too eager to laugh at his wry commentary (which, even he could admit, was only half-heartedly infused with wit on this evening) and all too desperate to fall into his good graces – or, alternatively, his bed, whichever came easier. 

To both his misfortune and theirs, Charles had quickly realised that he’d already bedded the most attractive members of the assembly and the rest, he found, grated a little too excessively on his nerves for him to want to spend the night with them. To make matters worse, Charles had found that, by some awful coincidence, his mother was also present at the ball and this fact alone could have turned even the most delightful of gatherings into the most dispiriting of social affairs. The fact that she was there intent on finding him a suitable wife – an endeavour she had set her mind on for almost a year now despite Charles’s many and considerable objections – made matters even more unbearable.

His desire for company summarily quenched, Charles soon excused himself from the crowds and made his way to the edge of the ballroom, whereupon he bade a servant to summon his carriage to take him away. He lingered on the fringes of the room, awaiting the servant’s return, and deliberately avoided the eyes of anyone who might want to speak to him. If he used his mind gift as a further means of keeping people away, then nobody knew it but himself.

Or so he had thought.

‘Viscount Xavier, I presume?’

Charles, startled by the unexpected address, jerked up straight. By all rights no one should have been able to disturb him; true, he was only using a weak tendril of his gift to keep people away but even that much was usually enough, allowing him to disappear from a crowd and escape the suffocating weight of attention whenever he desired to. Turning warily, he cast an assessing look at the person now standing next to him, the one who appeared to be unaffected by his powers.

A woman stood by him, dressed all in white. Even at first glance it was clear that she was a stunningly beautiful creature; if Charles had not been instinctively suspicious of her, he would have been inclined to invite her into his bed on the spot. As it was, it his rarely-piqued curiosity that now moved him to address her rather than any superficial lust.

‘At your service,’ he said, eyeing the woman carefully. He studied her, assessing, taking in her fair blonde hair and her pale white skin. ‘You have a sharp eye, madam.’

The woman’s red lips curved upwards. ‘I have often been described as sharp, it is true,’ she murmured, her voice low and rich and filled with an intriguing note of laughter. As Charles watched, she raised a hand to her neck, around which was seated a large, uncut diamond that dipped down into her almost scandalously low décolletage. She raised a fair eyebrow and the movement, though delicate, had all the hallmarks of a challenge rather than an invitation. ‘I doubt that my perspicacity is anywhere in _your_ league, however. Your reputation precedes you, Viscount Xavier.’

Charles frowned at the insinuation but decided to ignore it for the moment. ‘Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for you,’ he replied coolly. He deliberately did not follow the dip of her gown; he was all too versed in the tricks of seduction to fall so easily for the distraction of beauty. That said, he easily recognised that this woman was a master in her own right in the art of seduction: it was clear in her every movement, in her subtlety, in her seeming artlessness. His lustful desire was fast receding; in its place had risen something much rarer and more exciting – fascination.

The woman smiled, her eyes glinting as if she could tell what Charles was thinking. ‘My reputation has yet to be built,’ she said, waving a hand carelessly. ‘You see, I am but newly arrived in court. And you need not enquire into my family,’ she added before Charles could ask. ‘You will not have heard of us. We are only newly risen into gentry.’

Charles raised an eyebrow. ‘You are very frank, madam,’ he said dryly, appraising her with new eyes. ‘Not many would be so forthcoming about their lineage – or lack thereof.’ He paused. ‘But I notice that you still haven’t given me a name.’

The woman smirked. ‘Perhaps I sense that, unlike most here tonight, lineage isn’t all that important to you,’ she said, leaning towards him. Her perfume enveloped him, momentarily fogging his senses. _And as for a name, you may call me Emma._

Charles started with surprise. Another mind reader … he wondered what the odds were of two such persons encountering one another at a ball like the one they were at and quickly concluded that their meeting was not one of chance. He didn’t pull away, however, choosing instead to gaze at Emma in fascination. ‘So that’s how you saw through my barrier,’ he murmured, using his mind gift to reach out to her and, to his wary pleasure, feeling her do the same in return.

Emma’s laugh was light as a tinkling bell. ‘It was hardly difficult.’ She drew back slightly, her expression mildly reproving. ‘You were careless.’

Charles had, admittedly, grown slightly lazy in his use of his gift. He had long since found out that the tawdry things that occurred inside men and women’s heads were of little interest to him, and he scarcely needed to use his powers in order to charm others or to get them to do things for him – that all happened anyway. Now though – now he felt his interest in his gift reignite, as well as his interest in persons other than himself. Or, to be precise – one person.

 _Come inside_ , Emma’s velvety voice welcomed him when he stroked against the doors of her mind. _I could scarcely keep you out if I wanted to, Viscount Xavier_. There was a low thrum of hunger, of desire in her words. _I could feel your power from **miles** away_.

Charles felt his mind slide into hers, caressed on all sides by her gift. It was startling, erotic in a way that he had never felt before. It was one thing to seep inside the mind of average men; it was quite another to twine minds with one who also possessed the gift of the mind.

Her mind sparkled. That was the only way that Charles could describe it: it glistened like diamonds, hard and bright and fierce and beautiful. He saw glimpses of her memories as he laced his way through: he saw Emma as a child, poor as a church-mouse. He watched with fascination as she embraced her gift and used it ruthlessly, first to simply make ends meet, and then, as time went on and her family grew in affluence, to gain power and position and influence. Charles had always had mastery of his gift but he had never really _needed_ it – he had never used it for anything real, not the way Emma had. He was enraptured; he dove in further, devouring.

A million experiences flooded his mind, each captured and preserved in perfect crystalline diamond, evocative in the way that no other human’s memories were. Charles fed and fed and fed and Emma let him consume all that he wished, while taking what she could of him in return. Only once did she stop him, barring his way with ice cold doors. _No_ , she said firmly. _Not there. Not yet_.

Charles’s hunger was consuming; nevertheless he obeyed.

He felt Emma’s satisfaction at that and realised that, unwittingly, he had passed a test.

It seemed to him as if they had been in each other’s minds for centuries. When they withdrew, however, only moments had passed. Charles’s heart was racing, his mind sparking; no sexual conquest or act of pleasurable deviancy had ever left him this way, so intimately enthralled and exhilarated.

He reached out a hand and curled it around Emma’s waist, pulling her towards him. He didn’t check to see if his gift was hiding them from view – he did not care, either, no matter how scandalous their position was. 

‘Come home with me,’ he said hotly, his eyes burning into hers. He knew so much about her already – and yet, he found, he wanted still more. He marvelled at the thought. ‘Come with me, away from here.’

Emma’s eyes had gone from a light icy blue to navy, dark with hunger. Yet she placed a cool, firm hand gently on his chest, not quite pushing him away but halting him in his tracks.

‘Not yet,’ she said, smiling slyly at him. ‘Not just yet.’

Just then the servant Charles had sent off approached. ‘Your carriage is here, my lord,’ he said, bowing respectfully and keeping his eyes low.

Emma lifted an eyebrow. ‘There,’ she said. ‘It seems like you had better go.’ Her words, though teasing, were firm.

Charles sighed but he did not press her further. He instead put on his most charming smile and bowed gracefully before her. ‘And you are sure you do not wish to join me?’ he murmured, bringing her hand up to his lips to brush a kiss against her skin.

Emma smiled. ‘As I said before,’ she said, taking a step away, her ice-white gown sweeping against the floor. ‘Not just yet.’

Charles sighed. ‘Then until we meet again, madam,’ he said, bowing his head once more.

 _Emma_ , his mind whispered within hers, intimate and hungering.

He turned and, without looking back, walked away.

*****

When his mother arrived back home that night and summarily announced that she had found him the perfect wife, Charles had to confess to being surprised.

He was not surprised, however, when he found out, on digging into his mother’s mind, that the woman he was supposed to be marrying was astonishingly familiar.

He smiled to himself. _You move quickly_ , he sent, his voice dry.

Emma was quick to reply. _Somehow I didn’t think you’d mind_ , she murmured back, the cool silky touch of her mind as intoxicating from afar as it had been up close back at the ballroom.

 _I don’t like being used_ , Charles said firmly, but he felt his mouth lifting, his mind already racing at the possibilities.

Emma’s tinkling laugh resonated through his head. _My dear, it’s not being used if we both get what we want_.

Charles considered. He hadn’t wanted – _truly_ wanted – anything in such a very long time. Emma, though … Emma he wanted, and Emma herself wanted so much in return. Marriage was something that he had never seriously considered before, for all that his mother desired it, but now – now, he found himself thinking, it might be … _amusing_ to see just how far they could go together if they really put their minds to it.

Charles was, as ever, a slave to amusement.

He let out a long breath and reclined back in his chair, his decision made. Very well, he murmured. _I’ll play along, **Viscountess**_.

Emma’s laugh echoed in his mind, her pleasure clear in every note. _Oh darling_ , she laughed, her voice fond and full of velvety promise. _By the time we’re done, a Viscountess is the **least** that I am going to be_.

Charles smiled. Anticipation curled low in his gut and sparked through his brain, lighting it up in a way that he had never felt before.

‘Well then,’ he said. ‘We had better get started.’

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [An Ideal Match (To Court, A Lady remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19443133) by [citrinesunset](https://archiveofourown.org/users/citrinesunset/pseuds/citrinesunset)




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